I’VE managed to keep all but one Barbie doll banned from the house. Make-up is still the preserve of grown-up ladies and not little girls. But my goodness, why didn’t anyone warn me about Sylvanian Families?

Daughter, just turned four, was given a dolls’ house for her birthday, and some money to buy some people to live in it.

So we headed to Earl’s Barton’s famous Jeyes Pharmacy. Like the Tardis, this is no ordinary chemists but has an extraordinary warren upstairs of dolls’ house merchandise..

After trying to stop Bonnie touching tiny, delicate, miniature furniture and fittings in the Dolly Lodge, an amazing emporium for older collectors, we wrestled her out of the door and fell into a room filled almost entirely with Sylvanian Families toys. If you aren’t familiar, these are tiny toy animals dressed in clothes. And there are LOADS of them, costing about £15-20 a set.

I tried to get her to look at some peg-doll style wooden dolls’ house people, but she only had eyes for the rabbit family, the dog family, the monkey family, et al. While I tried to steer her towards the rabbit family (seven members, better value), she wanted to spend her cash on the four-strong hamster family and an extra pink hamster baby.

I have to admit, I find the whole SF look a little disconcerting in the 21st century, as they are a little wholesome and Stepfordian. Where’s the Emo teen hamster? The working mother hedgehog dressed in a suit rather than a pinny?